CELINE THOMPSON, PHDDepartment of PsychologyAssistant Professor

Contact

Dr. Thompson has research experience working with minority youth around social-emotional
skills development. These intervention studies focused on helping African American
children and adolescents develop coping skills and strategies for dealing with racism
in the academic setting and how to manage racial and academic stress through culturally-relevant
group therapy and athletic movement in playing basketball.

Additionally, she has clinical research experience working on smoking cessation projects
at the Treatment Research Center in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine’s
Department of Psychiatry as a research technician and project manager.

In her spare time, Dr. Thompson works on developing a database archive for maintaining
historical information and artifacts for Campbell A.M.E. Church, a 200+ member congregation
located in the historic East Frankford community.

Education

Dr. Thompson obtained her PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Development from
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where she also completed
her master’s degree in Psychological Services (currently known as Counseling and Mental
Health Services). Her dissertation research focused on understanding “racially-gendered”
identity development processes in black adolescent females.

Courses

Lifespan Development
Human Diversity/Individual Differences
History and Systems of Psychology
Research III, IV, and V

Research

Dr. Thompson's professional research interests include intersectionality, classroom
social justice, and program evaluation.

Publications

Selected Publications and Presentations:

Thompson, C. (April 2014). “What About Us?” Supporting the Need for Racially-Gendered
Socialization for African American Girls. Paper presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting
of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA.